


For the man who has everything (revamp)

by TallerMahler



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Dreamed Alternate Reality, Eventual Romance, M/M, Mind Manipulation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 13:27:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10594956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TallerMahler/pseuds/TallerMahler
Summary: Based on the JLA episode 'For the Man Who Has Everything'.Clark has everything he could ever want. He has a job he loves, a husband he adores, and children that will drive him happily into an early grave. There's nothing he could do to improve on what he has in his life.The only things he really has to worry about are the earthquakes threatening to destroy the city. Or the fact that no one else seems to notice them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER:  
> I do not own these characters, the comics this is based on, or the movies, television, games, toys, etc. etc. All rights belong to DC Comics and Co. This is a pure work of fiction not meant for profit.

Someone changed the alarm. 

Again. 

Clark folds his pillow over his face in a vain attempt at drowning out the sound of ten mariachi bands playing in his bedroom. It does very little to stop ‘La Cucaracha’ from hammering at his eardrums. 

“God _damn it_ , Jason,” is all he hears before the alarm meets, what he can only assume, is an ignoble death as the sound of twangy guitars flies across the room and plastic cracks against the tiles of the bathroom floor. 

“Your son is a menace,” Bruce growls from his side of the bed.

Clark can only chuckle and uses Bruce’s pre-coffee state to roll on top of him and pin him under his weight. 

“He’s your son as well,” he mumbles into the back of Bruce’s sleep warm neck. “You can hardly place all the blame on me.”

Bruce pushes himself further into the blankets for all of ten seconds, apparently searching his backlog of comebacks to throw in Clark’s direction, before he simply grunts and shoves his own pillow atop both their heads. The darkness the plush fabric brings is a welcome change to the sunlight peeking in through the blinds, even with a wet saliva stain from the night before pressing on his face. Clark always grins (internally, of course) when he thinks about the idiosyncrasies that mark Bruce as human, even if the man in question will deny them at knifepoint. 

Officially, Bruce doesn’t drool, nor does he make these soft, almost imperceptible snores when he sleeps. Unofficially, well, Clark knows the truth, even if he’s not stupid enough to say it out loud. 

He shifts his cheek so the wet spot isn’t sitting directly on his eye to rub his nose in Bruce’s hair. The precious few moments between waking and when Alfred is sure to come into their bedroom to force them into the real world are Clark’s favorite times of the day. Bruce is typically too unresponsive to any kind of external stimuli to pretend he doesn’t enjoy being spooned and the boys are either asleep or squabbling in the kitchen over who gets the last bowl of cereal, meaning Clark can squeeze in several moments where nothing moves but their rhythmic breathing.

Clark figures he has at least ten of those minutes before he’s forcibly removed from pressing his chest into the comforting warmth of Bruce’s back. If he were so inclined, he knows he’d feel the long scar Bruce acquired during a skiing accident as a child, one that looks far too much like a sinister grin for Clark’s liking, but this morning he focuses instead on ignoring the latent heat in his belly. It’s hard not to wake up with an erection on the worst of days, least of all when he’s comfortably settled into 1,800 thread count sheets with Bruce’s body tucked up against him. Bruce who, despite his griping, keeps the curtains pulled open slightly at all times simply so Clark can wake up with the sun beating down on his shoulders because he knows Clark likes how it feels. 

He shifts his pelvis back and wills away his want. They don’t have time for that today.

Something that sounds distinctly like breaking porcelain reverberates up to their bedroom. 

“The boys will destroy the kitchen if we don’t get downstairs soon,” Clark says into Bruce’s nape. 

Bruce presses his pillow harder into Clark’s face. 

“Go fuck yourself.”

Clark laughs and thinks to himself, _Life will never be better than this._

\-----

“So what did you get him?” Bruce asks, not-so-subtly glancing at Diana’s brightly wrapped gift. The paper is store bought, but he can’t imagine Diana getting Clark something so banal as a plush toy from the local drug mart; gag gifts are more Barry’s style. 

“I’m not telling,” she says with a grin, one that makes Bruce wonder if the box is lead lined. It looks light enough in her palm, but he’s seen her lift cars with little to no effort, so appearances in this case are relative. She glances at his empty arms and raises a curious eyebrow. “And what about you?”

Bruce flashes an envelope containing the check for $405,907.17 he wrote up last week. That it’s the exact amount Martha and Jonathan Kent need to pay off the damages to their farm from Darkseid’s attack months ago is irrelevant. 

Diana seems unimpressed at the blank envelope. Her eyebrow says as much.

“What do you get the man who has everything?” he asks with as casual a shrug as he can manage in the new armor. Lucius had added a stiffer chainmail Kevlar to the neck of his cowl after a mutant dog the size of a bear had nearly bitten through his jugular and it’s taking some getting used to. 

The eye roll he receives feels undeserved. He’s a billionaire, Diana is a five thousand year old Amazonian who looks not a day over thirty, and Clark is a super powered alien with advanced Kryptonian technology holding, among other things, exotic extraterrestrial animals, weapons, and a hologram of his late biological father in a fortress settled in the Antarctic. They are, by far, the three most difficult people to shop for among the Justice League members. The fact that Diana found anything to give Clark in the first place is nothing short of a miracle. 

He wonders if she bred him a plant. It seems the only plausible option to explain the confident smugness on her face. 

He’s about to call her on it when they find Clark standing stock still in the entryway to the Fortress, his chest with skin stronger than steel woven with purple, slug-like vines and eyes unresponsive. 

\------

The kitchen is, thankfully, still in tact when they make it downstairs with only a handful of collateral damages. 

“Only two broken cups,” Clark mutters. “I can’t believe I’m proud they restrained themselves this much.”

Bruce doesn’t deign to answer from his place at the table, though he absolutely heard Clark speak. Bruce may be tucked into the breakfast nook with his back facing the kitchen proper, paper open and coffee mug resolutely attached to his hand, but Clark has grown comfortable speaking into the air. He knows Bruce is simply multitasking. Instead, he turns back to the eggs he’s scrambling. 

Alfred has long since stopped trying to get him to sit at the table and have his breakfast prepared. Even after all these years Clark still can’t seem to get used to having a personal butler at his beck and call. Having everything prepared makes him feel more akin to an invalid than someone with a butler. His laundry and the housework were hard enough habits to put to rest after having grown up on the farm, but having Alfred glare at him is often more terrifying than when Bruce does it. So instead he settles for making breakfast for the family when he gets the chance, or for himself and Bruce at the very least. The dishes are a family affair as well, but that’s more of a discipline thing than anything else. Growing boys need to know not every mess they make will be cleaned up for them, and in truth Clark worries about the day they all move out and start living on their own. 

Just the thought sends a chill down his spine. The fire insurance alone will be nightmare enough. 

Clark turns the stove off and divides the eggs into two portions, plating them next to two pairs of toast. They’re soggier than he typically prefers, but Bruce has some of the strangest taste buds he’s ever encountered in his life. He has ‘city taste buds’ – ones that couldn’t tell an omelet from French toast in the dark even with Alfred’s spectacular cooking – though Bruce would say something equally unflattering about him. Clark knows this because he made the mistake of insulting Bruce’s pallet way back when they first met in college and he’d been resolutely ignored for two weeks, but Clark stands firmly by thick crust pizza, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and by Jove, dry eggs. 

Still, he likes being allowed to kiss his husband when the mood strikes him and he’s not about to give that privilege up over a stinking plate of eggs. 

Bruce has already abandoned the business section by the time he sets the plates down. It’s fairly marked up, little notes on rival companies and potential ventures for the future in an elegant script that screams ‘Etiquette Lessons’ to anyone bothering to pay attention. 

“Busy day ahead?” 

Bruce nods, seemingly more to himself than to Clark. “LexCorp is a hair’s breadth away from violating Copyright Law.” 

He twists the _Gotham Gazette_ to better show a large machine positioned next to a nondescript body of water. It has tubes of varying sizes placed into the murky brown water and wheels made of bristles beneath it. The machine is somewhat obscured by Luthor’s smug face as he cuts the ceremonial ribbon, making it obvious who the star of the show is meant to be. There are even men and women in lab coats flanking him, applauding with wide grins to complete the scene. The scientists all look like models – Clark’s pretty sure one of them isn’t actually wearing a shirt; he distinctly sees abdominal muscles peaking through – and all and all it looks very staged. 

‘LEXCORP LAUNCHES WATER FILTRATION DEVICE, BEATS WAYNE ENTERPRISES IN ENVIRONMENTAL RACE?’ reads the title. 

“That’s nearly an exact replica of Dr. Chen’s patent for a riverbed scrubber intended for Gotham’s waterways, something to pick up the garbage and filter out any oil run off from the ports.” Bruce turns the paper back to look at the picture again. “I’m not sure how he got the designs, but I plan on finding out.”

He frowns for a moment, as if studying the image for a clue of some sort, before flipping the section face down on the table and taking a bite of his toast. 

“You don’t look worried,” Clark says around a mouthful of eggs, ignoring the look he gets at the ketchup on his plate. _Elitist._

“The original plans have sensors to detect biological life with more advanced collection devices to separate them from the storage units. All Luthor is going to pick up is a barrel of mutated fish with those tubes.”

“Metropolis’s river isn’t that bad.”

“Clark,” Bruce says, flatly and in a manner offering no room for discussion. “The Metropolis waterways are more polluted than Gotham’s. It’s the only part of the city that’s still living in the 1920s.” 

Clark doesn’t bother to answer, largely because he knows it’s true. Jimmy once got an infection in both ears after he was pushed into the water by a shop owner. Apparently the married owner of ‘Winston’s Watches’ was none too pleased with have a picture printed of him kissing his girlfriend in the street.

“So,” he says instead, “Ma and Pa are really excited to see the boys again.”

He withstands another second of Bruce’s ‘Judgment’ before the smug look evens out a bit. “I’ve been told Damian is expecting your mother’s apple pie.”

“Just Damian, huh?”

“I’ll admit Tim seemed excited as well.”

“Sure,” Clark says with a grin. “Tim’s excited.”

Bruce merely grunts and turns back to his paper. The faint quirk to his lips makes something in Clark clench the same way it did whenever he’s reminded how much this man means to him. 

“I’ll be sure to tell Ma – ”

Clark is cut off by the violent tremor that shakes the kitchen. Pots and pans that are hanging above the central island clank against one another like oversized wind chimes and the windows shake in their moldings. Clark reaches for his juice to stabilize it, but by the time he has his hand around the glass the tremor has stopped. 

Bruce doesn’t seem to have noticed at all. His eyes are still glued to the Arts & Life section. 

“Hey, did you – ”

“Bruce!” he hears Dick shout from the kitchen entryway, “I can’t find my pack!”

“You probably lost it when you were drawing hearts in your diary last night!” comes Jason’s voice, cracking as it sits on the brink of puberty. 

“Shut – ”

“Ow!”

“ – _up!_ Bruce!” 

Bruce doesn’t look up from his paper. “It’s in the front hallway.”

“Shit, I’m gonna be late.” Dick’s voice fades into the background of the house alongside the thumping of the other boys as they run toward the front door. 

“Language!” Clark calls back at him.

“Yeah, yeah! I know!”

“ _I know! I know!_ ” he hears echoed three other times in varying falsettos before the heavy creak of the front door opens once and then slams closed. 

Clark grins to himself as he scoops the last of his eggs onto his toast and swallows them alongside the dregs of his juice. 

“It seems today is the big day. How much are you willing to bet Dick’s not going to make it back in time to catch the plane tonight?”

“Since it’s Barbara he’s asking to prom, I’d say the odds are high,” Bruce says in between sips of his coffee. “Yes or no, he’s not making it back by six. And we own the plane, it’s impossible to be late.”

“Beside the point.”

Bruce picks up their plates and begins to rinse them in the sink. It’s such a wonderful sight – both the domesticity of it and the well-toned backside framed in grey tailored slacks – that Clark can’t help but wrap his arms around Bruce’s waist. He tucks his face into the crook of Bruce’s shoulder and watches strong hands scrub away at the grime. 

He’s indulged for all of a minute before the silence is broken.

“You’re going to be late as well.”

Clark groans into the silky white fabric on Bruce’s shoulder. 

“And if you get stains on my shirt you’re paying for the replacement.”

Clark removes himself faster than if he’d been burnt and moves to stand at Bruce’s side. He crosses his arms pointedly, just to make it absolutely clear any stains resulting on the shirt are not of his doing. It earns him an amused grunt, which in turn makes him chuckle as he tucks his hands into his armpits. 

“You’re being a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”

“It took me a year to pay off the last piece of clothing I destroyed.”

“It’s not my fault you chose to rip through a Brioni suit like it was tissue paper.”

“That suit haunts me to this day. The price tag alone is enough to give someone heart palpitations.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I wear a suit that, and I quote, ‘fits my body like a glove,’ if I’m not mistaken.”

Damn it. The day Bruce Wayne and Lois Lane became friends was the day Clark’s sanity took an extended vacation. 

Clark rolls his eyes, placing a light kiss to the jut of Bruce’s chin. He double checks the sides of what is undoubtedly an exorbitantly priced button down for any missed smears of food, and makes his way to the hall closet to get his coat. He pats his pockets a few times for his keys and the rolled up rough drafts he had tucked away the night before. The papers are still settled in the hidden breast pocket, folded away beside his journal. 

He slides his wallet in phone into his pants pockets and shrugs his satchel over his shoulder, ready to make the long trip into the city. 

“You forgot something,” comes from behind him. 

When he turns around his glasses are dangling before him from the tip of a soapy finger. 

“Thanks,” he says. He reaches out for them, only to have them yanked from his grasp. Instead, Bruce grabs his cheek with a damp palm and kisses him soundly before his glasses are placed on his nose. He can feel the gentle pop-fizz of soapy water running down the side of his face as he stares at Bruce’s retreating back. 

“Remember,” he hears. “Be home by six.”

\------

“Remember!” Bruce yells at Superman’s unresponsive face. “Kal-El! _Clark!_ Remember your life! What you’re seeing isn’t real!”

Behind him he can hear Diana being slammed into ice and stone. Her pained shouting only makes the whole situation that much more dire.

Bruce tugs at the grotesque appendages. The thorns of the Black Mercy cut through the leather of his gloves to his palms until he can feel blood dripping freely into the inside of the suit. 

“Wake up, damn you!”

A purple appendage wraps tighter around Clark’s neck in a soft juxtaposition to the violent knife-like thorns carving into his skin. The plant hisses when Bruce tugs at the arm, hoping to untangle its mass of limbs from striking anything important in its attempt to latch on like a limpet. The flowers’ drooling tongues whip out at him, as if to ward him off the task, which only serves to infuriate Bruce more. 

“Wake up!” he shouts, feeling the strain of it on his voice. “Clark, _Wake up!_ ”

\------

“Clark, _wake up!_ ” 

Clark’s cheek slips from where he’s leaning on his fist. 

“Sorry, what?”

Lois smirks at him from over the partition between their cubicles.

“Long night?” 

The implication in her tone makes Clark sputter a bit. No matter how hard he tries to keep from reacting he still feels that telltale heat of a blush crawl up his neck. He doesn’t much mind gossip, it’s just when it’s at the office (where it’s hardly appropriate) makes him flush still. The last thing he needs is for his coworkers to catch him and Lois talking about sex; they all still make fun of Steve for contracting that virus to his computer last year, and as much joy as it brings Clark to see Lombard deal with the continued ribbing, he doesn’t need anymore of it in his own life. 

“No,” Clark says, slipping his fingers under his glasses and rubbing at his eyes simply to have something to do with his hands. “No, we’re – the family is going up to see my parents for the long weekend and Bruce and I were packing until early this morning.”

“Packing.” Lois studies him like she’s trying to figure out if he’s lying or telling the truth. He knows which she would prefer when her face drops into an unamused, cold stare. “ _Packing._ Jeesh, you two couldn’t be more boring if you tried.”

Clark knows what this is about. 

“Bad date?”

Immediately, Lois groans. 

“He said I was too intimidating to go out with, Clark, _too intimidating._ ” She throws up a hand in the air as if to wave off a bad smell. “I mean, is too much to ask for someone who cares about what’s going on in the Middle East? Who wants to actually _discuss_ the issues instead of placidly accepting whatever it is we’re told to believe?”

Clark shrugs. He knows from experience there is no right answer to the questions she’s asking. 

“Why did you go out with him in the first place? What happened to the lawyer from the fifteenth floor?” he asks. “I thought she kept trying to get your number.”

At that Lois flushes and runs a hand through her hair.

“Our names alone sound ridiculous. ‘Linda and Lois.’ It sounds like something you’d hear on the home shopping network.”

Clark stares at her, channeling as much disapproval as he can as he refrains from speaking. He has learned, after years of being married to a man whose very being radiates ‘aloof’, that silence often speaks for itself. 

“Besides,” she adds, somewhat brusquely. “I’ve _already_ given her my number and she hasn’t called me yet. So… there.”

Clark’s eyebrow raises, just enough to become judgmental. 

“I’m not pining.”

Clark snorts.

“Shut up.” 

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Shut _up._ ” She flops back down into her chair and rolls to her desk. “Just – ”

Whatever else she was going to say is swallowed by the sound of the building shaking beneath their feet. Everything is rattling; even the cheap plastic and felt of their cubicles are banging against each other in a cacophonous symphony of noise. 

Clark rushes to where Lois is sitting and pushes her to the floor, shielding her with the bulk of his weight. He can hear the wheels of her chair clattering as they slide across the carpet. He thinks back to this morning when the kitchen pans were knocking into one another. It was just a small tremor before, something that made his foundations feel unsteady, but this one – they’re so far up off the ground. He doesn’t know if he feels it more fiercely because they’re vibrating up the building’s support beams or if – 

“ _Clark!_ ” Lois yells in his ear. “Get off of me!”

“What?” 

“I said, ‘Get off of me,’ _asshole._ ”

She pushes his face away from hers with her palm and crawls out from under the desk to where everyone in the office has gathered to stare at them. They don’t look worried at all, or frantic, like people who have just experienced an earthquake should. 

In fact, Lois looks murderous as she straightens her vest. The rest of them seem downright amused. 

“What the hell was that?” she spits. 

“I – ” Clark looks at his coworkers again. Some of them look worried and others are laughing behind their hands. All in all, they’re fine. A quick glance around the room shows everything is in its rightful – or at least original – place. The office doesn’t appear to have suffered from a severe earthquake at all. 

It doesn’t make sense. 

“I don’t know,” he says, lamely. 

Lois’s glare softens into something more sympathetic. 

“Clark,” she says, kneeling in front of where he’s still hunched on the floor. “Are you all right?”

“I’m not sure.” 

Clark thinks back to this morning and the small tremor that went unnoticed by everyone in the house but him and shakes his head. Some small part of him wonders at how an earthquake in Gotham can be echoed so far away in Metropolis, or vice versa, or how he got here so _quickly_ for that matter – but… Lois’s hand – palm up – enters his vision, the smooth blood red nail polish barely visible from the bottom of her fingers. Suddenly, the questions become muddled difficult to hold onto; it’s like trying to hold onto a dream, only to have it slip through your fingers. 

He takes her hand only after he realizes he’s still sitting on the floor and she pulls him to his feet. 

His head is beginning to throb. 

“I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Maybe you should – ”

“Kent!” Perry shouts from his office door. “Get in here!”

Clark looks at the sturdy cubicles. Jimmy is trying – and failing – to look at him inconspicuously. His eyes are trained on Clark despite having an open file in front of him. When he catches Clark staring back at him he makes a show of shuffling the pictures on his desk into a pile and shoving them aside. 

“You okay, Clark?” he asks. “You look a little pale.”

Perry bellows from his office again, drowning out Clark’s pathetic mumble assuring he’s okay, which does little to take the concerned look off Jimmy’s face. 

“Maybe you should go home,” Lois says, ignoring Perry all together. “If you’re not feeling well you shouldn’t be pushing yourself.”

Clark blinks once more before to steady himself, but the last few minutes are still sitting deep in his chest. The earthquake _happened_. It was _real_. 

It was.

“ _Kent!_ ”

“ _Clark._ ”

“It’s okay, Lois,” Clark says flatly, heading to Perry’s office. “I’m fine.”

His ears are ringing by the time Perry’s door closes behind him. The man himself leans back in his desk chair like a king on his throne. He drops a half dozen binders onto the desk with a _‘thud’_ that jerks Clark back into awareness. The sound is like a switch turning the noise inside him off and erasing it, as though it was never there in the first place. 

Clark has time to wonder briefly why he felt so worried just a second ago, before Perry begins tearing him a new one over the missing fluff piece Clark had been assigned. 

“Good of you to join me,” Perry says, a hint of a growl in his throat. “You should know by now you can’t hide from me forever.”

\------

“You should know by now,” Mongul says, voice echoing through the empty caverns of the Fortress’s halls, “you can’t hide from me forever.”

Bruce doesn’t know if Diana says anything in return, but moments later her body is thrown into The Hall of Weapons like a ragdoll. The sound alone makes Bruce’s skin crawl, though he doesn’t have time to focus on the sensation. Moments later Mongul’s body explodes from the cavern as it is forced back by a beam of energy. It doesn’t do much to stop him, but Bruce can only hope it buys him time. 

“If you can hear me,” he mutters, both to himself and to the unresponsive man before him, “You’ve got to wake up. Clark, he’s going to _kill her_. He’s going to kill us all! You have to fight it and wake up!”

He thrusts a blade into the eye of one of the hissing roses attached to the center of the Black Mercy and revels in the scream it makes.

\------

“Alright, guys!” Clark says to the car at large. “We’re here. Time to wake up!”

Tim and Jason both groan from where they’re slumped over in their seats. The four-wheeler is more cramped than what they’re used to despite its being nearly brand new. Driving up in the rental makes a large part of Clark feel uncomfortable – much in the way extravagance in the face of his rural hometown always does – but a small part of him likes the air conditioned cabin and the plush leather seats. Sometimes he still feels like that kid who walked the long three miles to and from school every day when his classmates all inherited their parents’ cars. 

It’s why he always insists on paying for the rental – for most of their expenses – when they go back to his childhood home. 

The barn is the first thing that crawls over the corn-covered horizon, flowed quickly by the lumbering slope of his parents’ roof. The summer sun is still shining brightly in spite of the late hour, making the windows glow like small placid lakes in the frames of the hold farmhouse wood. His parents are waiting on the porch for them, just like they did when he was little.

“They’re always doing that,” he mutters, loud enough for Bruce to hear apparently because he turns his head slightly in question. 

“Doing what?”

“Waiting for me,” Clark says. “When they know I’m supposed to be coming home.”

He turns the wheel smoothly to pull into the long, dirt driveway. 

“It’s because one night after school some kids shoved me in a trunk and drove out into the cornfields to leave me – ” _strung up like a scarecrow_.

Clark breaks off before he can finish the thought, largely because it isn’t really a thought, per say. It’s a memory, but there was glowing jewelry draped around his neck that made him feel like his muscles had been dissolving. Like his heart was trying to beat up against plates of stone. It had felt like dying. He had been bleeding – bled for the first time in his life – and he had been terrified. Terrified of his body, of the pain he’d never felt before, and the thought that the last thing he would ever see would be rows and rows of endless cornstalks, alone as his body shriveled into nothing. 

His blood had gotten on the clothes of the men who had found him and pulled him free from the wooden posts, mixed in with dirt, sawdust, and the blood of the morning’s slaughtered pigs. 

Snakes, he’d thought. Engrained in his mind since childhood, _Watch out for rats and snakes when you go into the fields_. 

For the first time, he knew what it felt like to be vulnerable. He’d had to worry about being bitten. 

For the first time, his parents had waited up for him, called the police, wondered if they’d ever see him again. 

His parents had waited on the porch for him everyday since, but – 

That glowing green stone. That’s how they’d found out about the Kryptonite.

… the – 

_Kryptonite._

“Someone left you in a cornfield?” Bruce asks sharply. “Why haven’t I heard about this before?”

“It – ” Clark says, feeling breathless. He shuts the engine of the truck off once they’re safely parked behind the house. The shade it provides is a stark change from the sun beating through the windows from outside. “It’s nothing.”

Bruce hums under his breath in a way Clark hasn’t heard before, and yet it’s familiar like his own heartbeat. 

The truck shifts as the boys clamber out and into the all-consuming heat. It’s the kind that you wear like a second layer of skin, and somehow your sweat always manages to become sandwiched in between your body and the atmosphere so as to prevent any air from providing relief. Clark knows the sensation well as it licks a familiar wicked streak up his back as the car door opens and shuts. 

Distantly, he’s aware of his parents shuffling his family into their home. He knows Dick is still reeling from his ‘interaction’ with Barbara – though details are scarce, since he won’t tell what actually happened – and is likely revisiting the whole afternoon in his head. He’s likely taken up in his usual place in the living room under the ceiling fan to cool off. The other boys are less predictable; Damian and Jason like to switch up routines to keep people guessing their whereabouts until it’s clear food is being served and Tim is probably tinkering with something, but he’s just as likely to have made his way to the basement to sleep on the cold tile. Clark can’t really think straight about where or why his kids are moving, which is a strange feeling to have. 

A hand reaches out to his neck, fingering the damp strands of hair. 

_Bruce._

Bruce doesn’t say anything, just runs his hand across the tension in Clark’s muscles as though he’s tracing words against his skin. Maybe he’s writing out Clark’s thoughts; it sometimes feels as though Bruce knows exactly what he’s thinking, even when he can’t seem to think clearly. 

“We should go inside,” Clark says, though it sounds more like he’s asking a reluctant question. 

Bruce hums and makes no attempt at moving beyond his gentle tracings of the rivulets Clark’s sweat produces against his skin. Sometimes he forces two trails into one another, and it makes bursts of cold burst in sensations on his neck. They send little shivers of pleasure down his spine, as the remnants of cool air from the truck’s AC die slow deaths, billowing lazily in the cabin. 

Something about the moment feels wrong. He wants, almost immediately, desperately to kiss Bruce, but for the first time in years Clark’s not sure Bruce would let him. It’s like looking at a stranger or maybe more like Bruce’s face has been flipped, somehow, his familiarity turned to distance in the blink of an eye. 

Just as quickly, Bruce’s visage changes again, and Clark doesn’t know how he could doubt for a moment that he didn’t know this man. 

A finger flicks at his ear, strong enough only to be felt, before the passenger seat opens and Bruce steps out. He walks to Clark’s door and opens it for him, opening his hand in invitation. 

“Let’s go inside.”

The sun is beating down on them both, merciless in a way Clark is sure he must remember. He’s felt heat before; he’s felt – has he ever sweat under the sun’s heat before?

Bruce frowns, slightly. 

“Clark?”

His hand remains outstretched, beckoning. A bead of sweat runs a sad, unfamiliar trail down Clark’s cheek. 

And Clark… Clark really has no choice but to follow. 

\------

Bruce stares at the gurgling mass of purple thorns. Nothing so far has made a dent into the alien creature, and from the sounds behind him Diana doesn’t seem to be fairing well either. Still, he has faith she’ll come through. Clark, on the other hand, is a bigger problem. His pupils won’t dilate or contract and his chest isn’t moving to breathe. It’s like screaming at a statue and hoping it’ll wake up. 

Then the plant flexes, slowly squeezing its appendages in a rhythmic manner it’s done a few times thus far. The thorns shiver and dig further into Clark’s skin. 

_Trying to get a better grip_ , Bruce realizes suddenly. He times it, watching for it to squeeze once more, and then waits until the tendrils loosen just slightly so he can slip his fingers between Clark and the Black Mercy’s grips. 

He pulls with as much strength as he can muster, putting his boots on Clark’s chest and digging them in to gather traction. The Mercy flexes and hisses in his grasp, red tongues poking out of the hideous flowers as if to taste him. 

He tugs until something finally _gives_ and then – 

\------

“Bruce, I don’t think – ” Clark cuts off when Bruce turns to face him. He’s gorgeous. He’s always gorgeous, even when he’s bleeding, nursing a wounded side from a hit his Kevlar couldn’t fully absorb. 

No. No that isn’t right. Bruce knows how to kick box, he knows how to defend himself and his family, but he’s never needed to wear Kevlar or a… a cowl. 

“Clark?” Bruce asks. He’s standing in a single beam of light from the kitchen window. It makes him look young and old, like the man Clark knows and the man he’s remembering. He has his hand up, almost touching Clark’s shoulder, and with it the light illuminates the simple gold band wrapped around his fourth finger. It’s scuffed and worn with age – 

Wait, no. Bruce’s hands are scarred from hitting brick. From breaking bones. From decades of hard, laborious training. His hands are the things that are scarred, worn with age, not his wedding ring, not – 

“ _Clark_ ,” Bruce repeats, this time with more force. “What’s wrong?”

“Are you – ” Clark swallows back the word he doesn’t want to be true. He doesn’t want this to not be real, for the life he loves to be a lie. 

It’s a strange sight now that he really looks. Bruce has never been in his mother’s kitchen. He doesn’t fit at all, dressed head to toe in Armani beside the chicken printed curtains his Pa bought as a gag gift years ago. 

Clark takes a step back that Bruce matches, moving toward him and out of the sunlight. It shadows his face, and for a quick second Clark sees a flash of scarred skin – the dog that nearly chewed through his neck one night on patrol, _no_ – and suddenly it’s like ice water being pushed through his veins. 

“You’re not real,” he whispers, more to himself than to the – the _fantasy_ , standing before him. 

“What?” This time Bruce does touch him. His hands are soft and un-calloused as they turn Clark’s head back and forth, as if looking for a gash or a bump. “Of course I’m real. Did you hit your head?”

His hands are all _wrong_.

Clark thinks he should turn his face away, step out of Bruce’s grasp, but he can’t bring himself to move. 

“I didn’t hit my head,” he says, drinking in the smell of Bruce’s cologne. He’s never been able to remember the name of it, and the boys mocked him endlessly last year when he’d tried to buy some for Bruce’s birthday. He’d stood in the department store for twenty minutes with a patient store clerk who’d listened to him guess names that had been incomprehensible. He’d described the box, but it was black and generic among high priced packaging, and she’d brought him five scents in black boxes with gold labels with French names that had all smelled wrong. Dick of course knew its name, but had waited until Clark had burst into a nervous sweat to finally put him out of his misery. 

But it isn’t real, none of it. His life, his family. It’s all a dream. 

He can hear the boys playing outside. They’re throwing a baseball back and forth, just like Clark taught them. Only, these boys have never really been boys and they have never really been his.

“You’re not real,” he says with more force. Once he’s said it, everything makes sense. The world doesn’t seem so much in focus anymore, instead it blurs at the edges as the ground shakes once more. The earthquake it is a violent one, strong enough to knock picture frames from the walls as the floorboards crack beneath their feet. 

Bruce still doesn’t move, but Clark isn’t scared or confused. This time, he knows why, and he knows it’s the last. 

He takes Bruce’s hand in his own and kisses his ring. Bruce places his palm on Clark’s cheek just as the pipes in the kitchen burst open, spraying water on the cabinets and flooding the tile floor. 

“I love you,” he says, firmly. Definitively. “I love you so much – ”

“Clark,” Bruce says. He’s never sounded like this before. 

He sounds scared. 

“I love you,” Clark whispers. “Please say it back.”

“Of course I love you,” Bruce replies. They don’t say it often, though Clark doesn’t know why, but this time the words fall out of Bruce’s mouth faster than they ever have before. It makes something in Clark’s chest ache as he kisses him softly. It’s not at all how he wants to say goodbye, but he’ll never stop this if he gives anything more. 

The windowpane cracks. It sounds like pond ice beneath his feet in winter. Ominous. Foreboding. 

“I promise I’ll remember,” Clark tells him. “I’ll remember our life together.”

Bruce is quiet for a long moment. He searches Clark’s face for something, and in an instant Clark sees echoes of the real Bruce Wayne, of Batman. 

“You’d better,” Bruce says with a sad smile, kissing him once more. 

Sound has taken up residence in his body. There’s nothing but noise and darkness inside him, around him.

There’s nothing but Bruce’s lips against his own. 

The window shatters. 

And then there is nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the episode 'For the Man Who Has Everything' where Clark is attacked by Mongul in his Fortress of Solitude and forced into a dream-like state by an alien plant. I'm not sure if anyone else has done this (if they have, I haven't seen it and don't mean to copy them), but the idea struck. I've sort of combined some bits from the tv shows and from the comics and parts of this are taken largely from the tv episode from JLA.
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> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.


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